


i hope the night sky is pretty wherever you are

by favefangirl



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Love, Brothers, F/M, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Prompt Fill, Self-Pity, Tumblr Prompt, Unrequited Love, Weddings, self-sacrificing sherlock holmes, song prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 03:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/favefangirl/pseuds/favefangirl
Summary: Ain't nobody hurt you like I hurt youBut ain't nobody need you like I doI know that there's others that deserve youBut my darling, I am still in love with youBut I guess you look happier, you doMy friends told me one day I'd feel it tooI could try to smile to hide the truthI know I was happier with youBaby, you look happier, you doI knew one day you'd fall for someone newBut if breaks your heart like lovers doJust know that I'll be waiting here for you-Ed Sheeran, HappierIf weddings are such happy occasions, then why does Sherlock look so glum?





	i hope the night sky is pretty wherever you are

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt by [liaryn](https://liaryn.tumblr.com/):  
>  _Could you do a song prompt with Happier from Ed Sheeran and Johnlock please?_
> 
> Link to the full song [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TpcBDJZsJA)

Mary really does make a beautiful bride. She looks perfect in white with her hair pinned back behind her veil and that perpetual grin on her face. She's positively glowing. She circles the room talking to miscellaneous friends and loved ones but always finds her way effortlessly to John, as though they have come kind of magnetism drawing them together. Perhaps something like fate.

Sherlock nearly scoffs. If fate is real, then they were going to have to have some very serious words at some point. John walking (or limping) into his life had to have been some kind of miracle. People like Sherlock simply didn't get anything other. All those years they lived together, Sherlock would have sworn that they fit together perfectly. Now, watching as John and Mary lean into each other while talking to one of Mary's friends, Sherlock wonders if maybe they fit together just a little bit better.

It doesn't do to dwell on things that might have been, Sherlock is slowly learning. What if Moriarty had never existed? What if the events on that roof had never happened? What if Sherlock had returned that little bit sooner to find that John was still his? Sherlock forfeited his claim on John's heart the moment he made that phone call - his last words were meant for the man he loved which was tragically perfect - but John still owned all of his.

Sherlock hadn't really known what love was before John. He'd been severely misinformed. See, he knew it as a series of chemical reactions in the brain. Hormones gone haywire. It was illogical, irrational, a disadvantage, a viscous motivator. But John? Kind, loyal John who refused to take any of Sherlock's shit had come along and proven that there really is such thing as heartbreak. That feeling like the blood has stopped pumping, your heart is crying out for oxygen but you can't breathe and your lungs feel like they might explode and there's this sudden, inexplicable numbness. Like all the cells in your body collectively say, 'we don't know what we're meant to do now'.

What is living when your reason to get out of bed in the morning is gone? What is living when you find them again, only to watch them look at you like a total stranger? Sherlock can hardly believe he manages a faint smile back when John beams at him across the room. He looks happy. Sherlock cannot begrudge him that happiness, nor Mary, though he wishes it were his arm around John's waist. His head resting on John's shoulder. His hair tickling John's nose. Him stepping on John's toes as they waltzed their first steps into their new life together.

But he will let them have today. He will behave with civility, he will act as the best man should. He will pretend, just for these few hours, that the numbness is not spreading throughout his entire body. Then he will run. Far and fast, away and away and away. There's nothing here for him anymore, not without John. He'll let himself have today to memorise John's smile so he has something to lighten the world when everything seems drenched in darkness, and then he will leave them be, finally, to have the rest of their lives.

"Doesn't she look beautiful?" Janine sighs wistfully as she appears at Sherlock's side. "They look perfect together."

"Yes," Sherlock lies.

Or perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps they do look like the fairy tale couple, all bright smiles and exciting plans for their happily ever after. Perhaps, Sherlock thinks bitterly, they fit like puzzle pieces. Both stubborn and kind and filled with a rage and love. Perhaps they're the only ones who can douse each other's burning furies. Perhaps Sherlock never could. Didn't they make quite the pair, John with his bad head and Sherlock with his cold heart. Perhaps Mary can fill the cracks in John's smile with enough of her love to make him whole again.

"Your speech was lovely, by the way." Janine says. Sherlock can feel her looking up at him but doesn't turn around to look.

His speech was for John, as is everything he does. Was so John could understand the weight of his presence in Sherlock's life, and that even though he wasn't Sherlock's anymore, that was okay. Sherlock trusted Mary to handle John's heart with care, to hold him when he needed it and the keep him warm when the nights grew bitter and cold. Still, he's glad that Janine enjoyed it. At least someone is having a good time at this wedding.

"Thank you." Sherlock replies, still staring over at John and Mary. He keeps looking at her in a way he never looked at Sherlock, and Sherlock doesn't know how that makes him feel.

"Your welcome." Janine says, a little stilted, as though she can sense that Sherlock is a million miles away.

Janine, although tolerable, is just as dense as everyone else in the room save for Mary. She flutters her eyelashes and smiles coyly, flirts because she wants to and gets off on the thrill of some semblance of power. She's entirely dull, another human whose mundane life seems to resemble a soap opera. We're all the hero of our own stories, our lives only revolve around ourselves, it's only natural. But today, Sherlock doesn't care about hers.

She walks away and Sherlock almost feels bad for being rude, but Mary has herself plastered against John's side. He has to physically choke back the tears. It's not even the proximity, not the way they fit together so perfectly, it's the smile on John's face. The wide, bright grin John's been wearing all night which shows that without a doubt he is happy with Mary, in a way he never had been with Sherlock. That's the knife in Sherlock's heart or the bullet in his chest.

He looks away, can't help it, cannot bare to see them together a second longer. People are dancing, others are still sat talking, sundry guests who Sherlock has never met nor cares to. No one would notice if he were gone. John and Mary are the centres of everyone's attention, so it doesn't require much effort for him to slip away. He's gone before anyone notices he was even loitering in the corner looking like a kicked puppy.

He's stalking across the pristine grass outside when he hears someone calling his name behind him. He's surprised enough to turn around and is even more shocked to find John jogging after him. He pauses in the middle of the garden, waiting for John to catch up, and then waits patiently for him to catch his breath. His cheeks are flushed from the physical exertion and the fact that he's a little tipsy from the champagne. It's a good look on him. Sherlock has to look away.

"Where are you going?" John asks finally, still a little breathless.

"Home," Sherlock answers honestly. "Too many people. Sorry."

"Stay for me?" John requests, reaching forward and taking one of Sherlock's hands.

Sherlock allows a moment to look down at their intertwined fingers. He imagines what it would be like, to be able to hold John's hand whenever he felt like it. To kiss him and hold him just because he wanted to. If this were anything other than a goodbye. He knows he shouldn't, knows that no good can come from 'what ifs', but he gives himself that moment anyway. It's something he can look back on, he tells himself, when he's home alone in his cold flat. Something to comfort him. Then he tugs their hands apart, clasps both of his together in front of him to disguise the action, and refuses to meet John's eye. He can justify a moment, but any longer will lead to far too much pain eventually.

"Sorry," Sherlock repeats, then walks away.

He thinks he hears John call after him again, but he makes no attempt to follow, which perhaps is the perfect metaphor. John chooses Mary. John makes a life with Mary. Mary makes John happy in ways Sherlock never could. Sherlock could never deny John that. After everything, after their complicated relationship full of double meanings, hidden feelings and pain, the least Sherlock owes John Watson is a chance at happiness. If that happens to be with Mary then it is what it is.

He makes himself a liar and does not go home. He doesn't think he can face the empty chair and the lonely silence just yet. Instead he goes to his parent's house. Like a child, like a boy, he returns home to Mummy to sob into her lap while she strokes his curls and tells him everything is going to be okay. She hums him a lullaby that is dreadfully reminiscent of his childhood. When she gets up to make them both a pot of tea, Sherlock slips outside disposing of the nicotine patches on his forearm as he passes the wheelie bin, reaching into his jacket for the packet of cigarettes he had tried to convince himself he didn't need.

He has one in his mouth and is reaching for the box of matches, also in the inside pocket of his jacket, when a lit lighter appears in front of his face. At the end of the extended arm is Mycroft looking grim as ever. He lights the cigarette in Sherlock's mouth, then his own. He turns and steps beside his brother, looking out at the impeccably neat garden. For a while neither says a word, but then Sherlock is reminded why he was avoiding silence when the image of a Christmas spent with his family and John in this very house flashes through his mind. They kissed in this very garden.

"Come to say I told you so?" Sherlock asks, flicking the ash off of the end of his cigarette onto the floor beside his feet.

"Believe it or not, brother mine, it brings me no pleasure to see you in pain," Mycroft replies, all but rolling his eyes.

"You were right," Sherlock concedes, looking down at his shoes, the ones Mary helped in pick out for the wedding. "Caring is not an advantage."

This time, Mycroft really does roll his eyes. "You know Sherlock, for all your unique idioms and plentiful intelligence, you are just like everybody else. You still feel things. Pain, hatred, love. We can isolate ourselves from people, pretend like we're superior, but we aren't. We are two terribly lost little boys trying to navigate an impossible world. It is what it is." Mycroft shrugs. "But I'm sure there is another John Watson out there waiting for you." He takes one last drag of his cigarette. "Now, does Mother have any of her delicious Battenberg?"

Sherlock nods and says, "She was just making tea when I came out."

Mycroft genuinely licks his lips as he stomps out his cigarette butt into the grass underfoot and makes his way into the house. It's somehow not even satisfying that for once in his life, Mycroft is wrong about something. There is only one John Watson, and he is dancing the night away at his wedding, mere days away from the discovery that is his new wife is with child. There is only one John Watson and he is not waiting on Sherlock Homes.

It's tragic really, but Sherlock's cold heart is still John's, his whole existence is John's, _he_ is John's. Sherlock will forever be waiting on his blogger, even if there's really nothing to wait for.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Can you believe that in the thousands of times I have listened to this song, I never once linked it to Johnlock!?!?! Now I can't stop seeing it whenever I listen!
> 
>  **Prompts?**  
>  So, I have severe writers block at the minute and so in order to try and stimulate my writing juices (that is a weird sentence, I apologise) I’m opening myself up to prompts and requests for writing. I don’t really write smut, but I can try should the prompt inspire me. Also, I will try to write Supernatural but I mostly know what happened in season one and whatever is fanon so perhaps don’t suggest those unless there’s a really good prompt you think of. I’m looking for shorter stuff, one-shots only. Some may inspire a multi-chap fic, but that’s not really what I’m hoping for right now. If there’s a certain ship or fandom you’re interested in just ask and I’ll see what I can do. If you're interested please message me on one of the social media listed below, it is muchly appreciated!  
> ~or~  
>  **PROMPT IDEA**  
>  Send me a song and a prompt!  
> t’s a cool way to hear about new music and I’ll actually get some writing done this year!  
> Lemme know in the comments or on the social media listed below!
> 
> If you want to message me my Instagram is @Favefangirl and my Tumblr is [nebulous--bounds](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nebulous--bounds) I'm more than happy to answer any questions, maybe fill any prompts or just generally converse with you lovely people. Be sure to follow me, too, if you want! I'm mostly multi-fan and I blog a lot about writing (especially on Tumblr). You can also follow me on Pinterest [here](https://www.pinterest.co.uk/Favefangirl/).
> 
> If you enjoyed it you might want to leave a kudos or a comment. Or if you didn't enjoy it. Please, dear God, comment - I am so lonely... I also accept concrit if there's something about this that's bugging you that you wanted to tell me, just make sure it's constructive.
> 
> It would be really cool if you read some of the other works in the prompt series, y'know, if you've got a few minutes.
> 
> Have a wonderful existence!


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